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It’s got the hype, the excellently balanced multiplayer gaming and those giant hulking mechs, but Titanfall won’t be able to kill off single player campaign games just yet.

On all other counts, it lives up to the pre-launch excitement and is the first real reason to buy an Xbox One. It is the first big creation from Respawn, the new studio built by former Call of Duty originators Infinity Ward, a big and loud exclusive title that, in the months leading up to its release, looked like it could rewrite video gaming’s rules.

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Respawn execs promised to bring scale, verticality and story to the first-person shooter genre, so two out of three ain’t bad. It exceeds at the first two, but just can’t pull off the story. The game is perfectly made for the many gamers who simply skip the single-player campaign in first-person shooters and jump into multiplayer mode, so in this case, the developers decided to skip it altogether, preferring to put their time and energy on where the players are.

That focus on the multiplayer shines, and what they have here does sing, managing to push the multiplayer experience up another notch. The polish of the maps, the balance between different classes — with additions like the target-locking smart pistol, which gives a leg up for those without twitch trigger fingers — the abilities to wall run, double jump and ride ziplines, add a verticality to the worlds. Also impressive are the anti-titan weapons that make it possible to bring down those hulking mechs.

And, oh those titans. It is remarkable that giant robots in games have enjoyed the renaissance that zombies have across pop culture. In Titanfall, once you earn the privilege, you suit your foot soldier up in a giant robotic exoskeleton — not unlike the jaeger robots in Pacific Rim — and proceed to wreak havoc.

Everything about these mech suits is awesome, from earning the ability to call them in, to suiting up and blasting away at others and, most sweet of all, actually pulling off the game’s namesake move, which is falling onto an enemy. Even when your titan is critically injured, the ejection animation is pure joy.

The only real knock on the multiplayer is the fact that there are only five modes that come with the game, and while the foot soldier-giant mech dynamic is great, there is not much surprise in the modes, and most are variations on death match, like Attrition, Last Titan Standing and Pilot Hunter. There’s also Hardpoint Domination, where you have to protect three points on a map. The 15 maps are excellent and varied and give plenty of variety to move around and search for a play style that works best.

As I played over the weekend, there were some connection issues as games were still getting populated, and the real question is how they will stand up to the millions of players that are expected to jump on. EA has had major issues — cough, Battlefield 4, cough — with this recently, so it remains to be seen whether the servers can withstand the many gamers who are excited to play this game during the initial crush.

Which brings us back to the lack of a single-player campaign, which might have been an option for people to use if there ever were an online interruption. Even more strange, it is clear that Respawn created some sort of backstory in this world, but it just feels like they didn’t actually want to flesh it out for the players. There is a campaign mode in the game, but it’s really just poorly told snippets of backstory that serve as setup for multiplayer skirmishes.

It is disappointing because the game is so well made on every other level; it makes me want to know more. I want to know why the Militia or the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC — and really, it says enough that I only found out what that stood for by checking the game’s Wikipedia page) are fighting, and perhaps how those titans came to be. To be fair, during the matches, there are characters who speak to you in battlefield chatter, and let you know that your titan is soon to be ready, but that’s still just a half-assed attempt at a back story.

Beyond giving a reason to shoot things, there are also big dollar reasons to create a mythology behind these games. One only needs to look at Halo, which beyond just its games has spawned an entire sub-industry of books and tie-ins to create a universe.

There is already talk of a live-action Titanfall film, as well as rumours of a downloadable single-player campaign. I hope these turn out to be true, because while the fighting is exquisite and super fun in Titanfall, a real story would make it that much more satisfying.

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